The Tyrannosaur Chronicles

So I’ve been keep this quiet for a while, but for the last year or so I’ve been writing what will become my first (and hopefully not only) book. It’s a popular science book with Bloomsbury Press and their new Sigma range of titles, all of which are science / natural history and it’s due out in early 2016. Obviously it’s a dinosaur effort and this is focused squarely on the tyrannosaurs. It tries to cover everything from their origin to extinction and that means evolution, taxonomy, anatomy, physiology and mechanics, and in particular my areas of special interest in ecology and behaviour. It’s not quite wall-to-wall dinosaurs since there’s the context of their environments, competing carnivores and potential prey and that means some other things do at least get a look it.

As will be obvious from the cover, Scott Hartman has been involved and in addition to the skeletals adorning it, there’s a bunch of his renditions inside too. (Those who read his blog might have spotted the recent plethora of tyrannosaurs and this book is part of the reason for his push on them). So that means at least some bits of the book will be accurate and in a desperate attempt to make sure the text isn’t too littered with errors, Tom Holtz has been good enough to plow through the entire thing for me (so I’ll blame any remaining mistakes on him going too fast). More seriously, I really can’t thank them both enough.

Right, that’s enough shameless self-promotion for now, so I’ll return to editing the thing and watching the Mexican standoff between my geckos. Thanks for reading the blog, and hope you might read the book.

I have no idea how many pages it will be – rather depends on page size and font! I’ve written about 85 000 words, it’s very much a text-heavy book with a few illustrations (and a photo spread) and not an illustrated work.

I’m still working on edits for the book. At some point it will have to be signed off and I can’t change things anymore (and there’s a note in the front to say that the book by definition will be out of date in at least some respects by the time it is printed, in addition to any errors or oversights) but this is something that should go in somewhere. I’ve not actually seen a paper yet though, only a press release…

Congratulations for your first book! Having followed this blog for quite a while now, I really look forward to reading it!
Unfortunately, by the time it’ll be released, I won’t live in the US anymore and will be either back in France or in Germany. Any chance that it can be shipped to those countries?

Hi, really have no idea I’m afraid. Obviously I don’t make those decisions and didn’t think too much about it at the time and with the book still 9 months away I’ve got other things to be getting on with. It’s already available for preorder on Amazon.co.uk and through BLoomsbury so I’m sure getting it in Europe one way or another won’t be too hard.

1stly, sorry both for not having commented in while & for taking so long to comment on this blog post. I’ve been meaning to, but kept getting busy & forgetting.

2ndly, congrats on finally writing a popular dino book (which, as you may remember, is what I’ve been hoping for since I started following this blog). If you don’t mind, I have some questions about said book:
-Will there be a kindle edition?
-Is it safe to assume that, like this blog, it’ll be more for “the Enthusiast” ( http://whenpigsfly-returns.blogspot.com/2008/04/paleo-reading-list.html )?
-Will it cover tyrannosaurid scales in general & T.rex (I.e. Wyrex) scales in particular? This 1 is especially important. Many thanks in advance.

The book is very much aimed at a general audience. I hope it will still be of interest for keen dinosaur watchers but that’s not the target.

I have no idea what the ebook situation is, but I suspect one is coming.

No it won’t look at scales in much detail. It doesn’t look at anything in much detail, I’ve got 80 000 words to cover a century of history, 100 m years of evolution, ecology, behaviour, taxonomy, anatomy, and explain the underlying principles of things like systematics and biomechanics and for a non-science audience. Given that I once wrote a paper that came in close to 10 000 words based on one tooth, you can see how this might be tricky to get into fine details.

Yes, I know the Amazon blurb is inaccurate – I didn’t write it or get to edit it.